


Things Have Come to a Pretty Pass..

by Diminua



Series: Take a Deep Breath, Pick Yourself Up.. [2]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: All this stuff is so much easier if you're a Cat, F/M, No really - the Cat has no idea why they're not already doing it.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2019-11-07 06:26:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17955302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diminua/pseuds/Diminua
Summary: In which tea is drunk, the speed of light is broken, and the last two human beings left in the universe somehow manage not to kill each other.





	1. Chapter 1

The next few weeks are still hard. Holly can turn the ship around, bring them home, but they can’t get there for another three million years, which means stasis, and Rimmer insists that they need to check structural integrity on the outer hull before they do that again. 

‘Holly could wake us up if anything happened.’ Lister protests. ‘How many tests can you run anyway?’ But he’s got some sort of complex about it - probably thinks being really, really careful and nitpicky from now on in will make a difference to his being a bungling bloody idiot before. 

Meanwhile there’s the forgetting. Not as bad as after Nan died (Deb’d find herself in the biscuit aisle in the megamarket, looking at the pink wafers and bourbons, before she remembered she didn’t need to buy them anymore). More that she sort of knows every room in the ship is empty, but she hasn’t learnt to expect it yet. It’s still a downer every time she goes into the Copacabana or the drive room or the canteen or.. just about anywhere really.

It’s weird as well finding things where she left them – Marie was a tidy-upper, a putter of things in drawers, and Lister could never find anything in the bunkroom without a good rummage first. 

Now it looks like something exploded in there. Like her place back on Earth, except without the damp and dirty yellow roses on the wallpaper. Cat picks his way through fastidiously, curious but disapproving, and then disappears off wherever he disappears off to with a glittery brooch and some hair serum stuff she never liked anyway. 

Eventually he comes back with some Cat things. Books and what looks like maps. Star charts maybe? Cat avoids the subject whenever she raises it, but Holly says the others left decades ago, off to find their promised land. 

And still, for weeks, all Rimmer wants to do is metal stress tests and inventory. Even tries to pull rank and rope her in, but she’s not in the mood to be bossed these days. Especially not if it means stock-taking. Been there, done that, worked in the supermarket. 

‘Right, that’s it lass.’ Rimmer snaps. ‘You’re on report.’

‘What’s the point, Rimmer? No-one’ll read it. Thanks to you there’s no-one to read it, remember?’ 

‘That’s not the point Lister. I’ll know. It’s important we keep things shipshape round here.’

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean why? Because we are – unfortunately in your case I admit - all that is left of a great civilisation. We need to preserve it. Nurture it. Otherwise we might just as well go mad.’ 

He’s serious too. Lister stares. 

‘Might be a bit late in your case Rimmer.’ She says. Then as he draws himself up to his full height. ‘OK, ok, look, I’m not sure if I get where you’re coming from or not.’ She admits. ‘But d'you know what, if it’ll make you happy, put me on report. I’ll be in the bar.’ 

‘Wonderful idea Listy.’ Rimmer says obnoxiously. ‘Spectacular idea. Give my regards to the air.’

It riles her all the more because it’s true. She knows it is. Sitting like the last living wallflower in the Copa topping off a ready mixed pina colada with a paper umbrella and a cherry on a stick, raising it in salute to - who really? The whole human race?

Red Dwarf echoes. Metal stairs, metal hull, metal ceilings. Everything echoes. It used to hum like a hive.

Maybe going home is stupid, but there’s nothing for her here.


	2. Chapter 2

Somewhere in all this – she’s lost count of the days by now - Rimmer starts jogging before breakfast, timing himself with the focus of a man who’s found something fresh to obsess about. Circuiting down the stairs between their decks, along her deck and then up and along his own corridor in the opposite direction. Which means he wakes her up, belting past, and she blinks blearily at the alarm clock and goes to get breakfast, still lingering at the food dispenser when he comes round again. 

‘Just out of bed Lister?’ He says chirpily. ‘I’ve been up for hours. Late one was it?’ 

‘Mornin’ Rimmer.’ She says, thinking up for hours doing what? There’s nothing to do. She spends her own evenings watching the stupidest sappiest movies she can find, sobbing more at the happy scenes than the sad, which would be a bit tragic really at her age, if she was back on Earth. If she had the option of having a life.  


Her interest in her appearance – never what you might call obsessive - nose dives to can’t be doing. She sleeps in her underwear and pulls on mismatched t shirts and work trousers when she wakes, loose and unflattering and hiding the fuzzy bits she can’t be bothered with either. She starts smoking again as well, something she hasn’t done since her teens.

Rimmer says it’s a deathwish, and she says so what if it is. 

The bickering passes the time. Neither of them comment on how she’s got in the habit of dragging herself out of bed when Rimmer jogs past in the mornings, or how they’ve both taken to leaving their bunkroom doors open during the day. Wandering in and out much as the Cat does, albeit mostly to argue about Rimmer bossing the skutters or hiding her cigarettes. 

‘It’s for your own good, Lister.’ He says, flicking the kettle on without really thinking about it. ‘Tea?’ 

‘Yeah, go on then.’ Cat has already told her where the cigarettes are. She’s just making a point. 

He’s still got all his astronavigation revision out on the table. Still wants to take that exam, even though there’s no space corps to care. Lister flicks through idly, looking for practical stuff. Stuff they can use. She sort of knows how to steer the small transports – it’s a standard control column and they’re tough little beasts apart from the screens anyway. She’s got no idea about the Dwarf. 

The books are useless. She can look at the pictures, but the words might as well be in Finnish for all the sense they make. What the smeg is a quasar, anyway?

‘I think I’m getting cabin fever.’ She says. ‘D’you think there are any planets around?’

‘Planets?’

‘Yeah, you know. Something to look at. I’m getting bored of reading Cat books.’

‘Well if the one you quoted to me is any indication I’m not surprised.’

‘C’mon Rimmer, you know that was for three year olds.’ 

The antagonism between Rimmer and the Cat has settled down to a low simmer. Mostly because the Cat simply doesn’t notice or care about Rimmer’s disdain, and Rimmer thinks the Cat is too stupid to worry about. Lister isn’t so sure. You can’t judge another species by human standards. Probably they seem stupid to him, just in different ways.

Or at least in one very specific way. 

‘You know what I don’t get.’ He says, after a month or two, when he’s worked out she’s not going to steal her shiny brooch back. ‘You’re a she monkey and he’s a he monkey right?’

‘Right.’ 

‘But you’re down here and he’s up there.’ 

‘So?’

‘So I’m saying I don’t get it.’

Lister just gives him his krispies and an old fashioned look that he returns in kind and happily steamrollers over. 

‘I mean I get that he wouldn’t be your first choice. Hell if I was you he wouldn’t be my first choice either.’ He smiles wide and lays his hand on his chest. ‘Obviously I would be my first choice.’ 

It’s not meant flirtatiously, he’s either absorbed what she said about species, or possibly has second thoughts of his own. He’s a sleek and finicky beast, and they must be as odd to him as he is to them. 

Or odder, since Lister has actually had cats, and isn’t surprised when he does things like curl up in Rimmer’s bunk for a nap, and Rimmer comes charging downstairs to insist Lister remove him. 

‘Be serious Rimmer, he’s not my cat is he?’ 

Then, since they’ve both got in the habit, she starts the kettle boiling, and Rimmer pushes a few extraneous items to the other end of the table to make room for his mug. He doesn’t look comfortable – he keeps scanning the place for snipers or spiders or something, and his legs are fidgety with the impulse to stand him up and march him out – but he has learnt to sit. 

‘If I didn’t know better I’d think you’d had burglars in here.’ He complains. 

‘We can’t all file our underpants.’ She counters. ‘Look, there’s another bunk in your room, why don’t you sleep in that?’

‘It’s too short.’ 

‘Move into another room then. There’s loads. You could move into officers’ quarters or something.’ 

‘So could you.’

‘I’m going back into stasis Rimmer, I’ve told you that. Holly said to when we go through lightspeed anyway. I might as well just stay there.’  


‘And what happens to me if you do that?’

‘I don’t know do I?’ She says as if they haven’t had this debate twenty times before. ‘I’m not your Mum, Arnold. You could go into stasis too.’ 

‘You know I don’t.. Hang on.’ 

Something she’s just said has registered. His head shoots up, like a mongoose on the alert. Even his hair seems to stand to attention. 

‘Just a smegging minute.’ He says. ‘Just scroll back a bit for me. When are we going through lightspeed?’

‘About a day. I thought Holly told you.’ 

‘Why am I always the last to know what’s going on around here?’ Rimmer demands. ‘I do happen to be the senior officer on board.’ 

Lister shrugs as apologetically as she can with two cups of tea in her hands and no real remorse. ‘I thought Holly was going to tell you.’ 

‘Well why would you think that? That computer has absolutely no respect for me you know.’ 

‘Yeah, I do know.’ 

At that, Rimmer bristles even more, and no doubt he'd come back with something really snappy if he wasn’t interrupted. 

But a boom of noise, a shudder that somehow doesn’t make either of them lose their balance, doesn’t even make the tea slosh out of the mugs onto the table, silences them both. 

A sensation of being shaken and then stable, a blinding light that leaves no afterimage, a deafening sound that doesn’t leave their ears ringing. Just everything, weirdly, the same as before, is just as unnerving. 

Rimmer slides under the table, sleek and slippery as a weasel, but it takes Lister a second to react. 

‘Holly.’ She asks. ‘What was that?’

He answers at cross purposes at first, confused or avoidant, his image see-sawing and breaking up on the screen, pixellating and shivering out of focus, before he pulls himself together and admits they’ve broken the light barrier 20 hours early.

‘I can’t do it.’ He says. ‘My bottles gone.’ 

‘Snap out of it man.’ Rimmer’s head pops out from under the table to bark the order. 'Pull yourself together.' 

‘Oh hark at it.' Lister says. Then, when he glares up from under his collapsing fringe. 'You ok Rimmer? D’you want your tea down there?’ 

At least he's quiet as he crawls out.

‘Anything we can do, Hol?’ Lister asks.

‘No, I’m getting the hang of it now.’ 

She’s not sure whether she believes him or not.


	3. Chapter 3

‘Can you hear that?’ Rimmer stops dead as soon as they step onto the stairs, peering up through the metal grating, trying to locate the distant stomp stomp stomp of feet coming down. 

‘Have you always been this jumpy?’ Lister mutters. Although, ok, yeah it is weird. Normal people don’t walk down stairs like that do they? Each step so even, so much like the last. It’s definitely not the Cat, who travels in a light footed zigzag and prefers to use the vents to move from floor to floor anyway. Someone else – two people even - not exactly marching but moving in synch. Silent except for their footfalls.

She leans out and tries to peer up between the railings, ignoring Rimmer’s hissed complaint that she’s being a gimboid and should get out of sight before ‘they’ see her. 

Down and down the steps come, and something of Rimmer’s fear must be infectious because surely she should be running up to meet whoever it is, not skulking in the shadows. 

But if everyone else is dead then who, or what, might she find? 

Or maybe she just needs to stop watching so many zombie movies.

Whoever they are they’re on the level above now, shadows shifting as they move under the wall light in its wire cage and then settling as they turn off onto the floor above. 

Rimmer’s floor, where the Cat is still sleeping. 

'OK.' Lister mutters to herself. 'I'm going in.'

She runs up as lightly as she can, waves urgently for Rimmer to follow when he hesitates. He catches up – not at all happy about it – just as she’s peering round the open corridor door.

Nothing. No-one. Not a sound or a sausage. The nearest bunkroom doors are closed just as they normally are. Only Rimmer’s is open. Just as it usually is.

‘Cover me.’ She says. 

‘With what, exactly?’

‘I dunno. I’ve just always really wanted to say that. Just make sure nothing sneaks up on me, yeah?’ 

Rimmer rolls his eyes and skulks back a bit, trying to get a vantage point to check back down the stairs as well as keeping an eye on the corridor Lister is creeping down. It would be just his luck to be ambushed while valiantly guarding the rear. 

It’s quite a nice rear though. Curvy. Under different circumstances he wouldn’t mind guarding it. At present, however, he wishes she’d hurry the smeg up. What does she think he’s going to do if some slavering beast erupts out of one of the doors behind her anyway? Find another table to hide under? Freeze to the spot? 

Still he _is_ here. If she was anyone else he’d be back down those stairs and gibbering in a cupboard by now. 

He tenses as she turns into the bunkroom. There’s still no sound. 

Lister glances round quickly once she gets through the door. First the Cat, comfortably curled up in Rimmer’s bunk, duvet pulled up over his lemon suit, arm snug beneath the pillow. He’s a tidy sleeper – not a hair out of place. He’s clearly unharmed. She checks the shower as well, since that’s the only place anyone could be hiding. Nothing. So she goes to beckon Rimmer.

Who takes the corridor in a flying run. Has to clutch at the doorframe to slow himself as he swings round. 

‘Have you checked the shower?’ 

‘Yeah.’ 

‘Good.’ He slaps his hand on the door panel to engage the lock.

‘Rimmer, calm down. Holly will know what’s going on.’ 

‘I wouldn’t trust that goited computer to know what day of the week it is.’

She ignores that. ‘How did they get on board anyway? We’re travelling at lightspeed.’

‘They’re probably lightspeed monsters.’ Rimmer says, revealing a hitherto unknown talent for space fiction. ‘They’re probably attracted to things that travel at lightspeed. Or maybe they themselves only exist at the speed of light, so we’ve just becomes visible to them. Or maybe they’re from one of the systems we’re passing through and we’ve broken some kind of interplanetary speed limit and they’re about to slap a colossal fine on us and then throw us in some foetid, sordid alien dungeon when we admit we can’t pay it.’

‘What’s he on about?’ The Cat asks blearily, opening an eye just wide enough to make his displeasure known. ‘Can’t you make him be quiet? Some of us are trying to sleep here.’

‘Yes, in my bed.’ 

Lister lets it go and leans over to tap the mirror that, in most quarters, doubles as a vid screen. 

‘Hi Holly. You there?’ 

‘I’m a bit busy right now Deb.’

‘We think there’s someone else on board.’ 

‘Nonsense. Can’t be.’ He looks absolutely affronted at the thought. Insulted, even. 

‘You sure?’

‘Absolutely. I’m scanning 24/7, round the clock. There’s nothing that happens on board I don’t know about.’ 

‘Were you scanning the stairs just 5 minutes ago? Because we heard at least two people, and it wasn’t skutters.’

‘Ah. I get it.’ Holly’s face relaxes into a confident smile. ‘It’s not someone else on board though. It’s just an echo. Didn’t I explain this to you?’

‘No’ 

‘You’re catching up with future events before they’ve happened.’


	4. Chapter 4

It doesn’t sound so bad the way Holly explains it. A freak caused by travelling at the speed of light. Nothing to worry about, nothing that means they have to stick together, but somehow the silence on the stairs is louder than it was as Lister goes back down, and something niggles on the edge of her consciousness as she enters her bunkroom, makes her turn as she passes the table. 

She doesn’t know why. Nothing’s different. Or if it was it isn’t now. 

At least – unless – are the shadows strange? She’s not sure, but they don’t seem right, the tiny patch of darkness under the table is bigger than it should be. Stretched out, as if there’s light coming from the other side of the room. 

But there isn’t. The only light is the one fixed in the ceiling. There’s a window, a tiny deep-set diamond-shaped porthole that looks out on empty space, but no light has ever comes through that. It’s just there for psychological reasons. 

She glances up to confirm that’s still the case, looks back down again and thinks – she’s still not sure – that the shadow has got longer. She takes a step back. 

‘Freaking me out, man.’ She mutters to nobody in particular, still backing up even though she knows it’s smegging stupid. It’s just a shadow, but all the same she’s edging around it, keeping in the light. Wondering why none of the other shadows are pointing this way.

Sod it, she thinks, time for a drink. Maybe when she comes back from the bar all this weird smeg will be over with. 

Up in his own luxurious suite, now thankfully free of the Cat’s presence, Rimmer is performing his usual before bed routine, getting his pyjamas off their hanger in the wardrobe, thoroughly brushing his teeth and gargling, giving his hair the regulation comb through, plumping up his pillows, setting his favourite language learning tape running. 

Normally he would sit up a little while and read five or six pages of one of those books he firmly believes everyone should read (although he doesn’t personally enjoy them much and can only get through in small digestible chunks), but tonight he wants sleep, ambient noise, and not to see or hear anything that might unnerve him. 

He doesn’t reckon on another explosion, shocking him out of the pleasant doze that precedes deep sleep, eyes flying open, legs tangling ridiculously in the duvet as he tries to scramble out of bed in the dark, calling for lights, and Holly. 

Which only gets him a recorded message. Useless smegging goited computer. 

_Ĉu vi volas danci kun mi?_ The tape burbles in the background _jen kiel ni dancas de kie mi venas._

‘Oh for..’ The lights flash up just as Rimmer wriggles his way out of the duvet and onto his feet, and whatever he was about to say sticks sharp in his throat, never to be said.  
Because he’s facing the mirror, and what he’s seeing is himself but not himself. An older Arnold Rimmer, with neater hair and a green metallic uniform and the gleaming chrome brand of an H on his forehead. H for hologram. H for He Has breathed His last. 

_Vi enmetas vian dekstran kruron, vi eltiras vian dekstran kruron_ the tape winds on, mindlessly, but Rimmer isn’t listening to it. He’s already pelting down the stairs.


	5. Chapter 5

‘Lister!’ Outside the room the emergency lights are on, flashing, casting apocalyptic flares of red and amber up the walls and making it harder to smegging see, actually. Who designs these things? But Rimmer has run this route every morning lately, down the stairs and past the dispenser and two, four, six doors down. It’s open.

The slight flutter of relief barely gets started before his heart sinks again.

‘Typical.’ He mutters to the empty room. ‘Probably gone for a smegging kebab or something.’ He supposes this is about three in the afternoon to her.

Back out in the corridor, the emergency lights have gone off. It’s quiet and still. Rimmer curses under his breath, staying angry to chill the sour feeling that it’s too quiet. That something has happened, that he’s completely alone. No Lister, no Holly. Not even the Cat.

Alone and soon (well soonish anyway, soon enough) to die.

He heads for the drive room, not really thinking too hard about why. There will be readouts, even if he can’t make sense of them. There will be something.

But the drive room is just as he left it. Clipboard propped up tidily to the right of the console, chair pulled neatly in. None of the screens are showing anything unusual. High noon on the Marie Celeste. So normal it’s frightening.

It’s a relief when Lister turns up at a sprint, skids hard enough to leave a mark on the floor, hair whipping around her shoulders as she scans the room.  

‘What happened then?’

‘Nothing. I found it like this. Just another echo.’

‘Great.’ She drops into a chair to catch her breath. ‘I’m not loving this y’know.’

She squints at him, confused when he doesn’t reply. He’s normally a snarky so and so. Silence and poker face is probably not a good sign.

‘Something wrong?’ Rimmer says stiffly.

‘Nice pyjamas.’ She offers, giving up. He’ll tell her when he’s ready to. ‘How d’you get them so starched looking?’

‘Starch.’

‘Figures.’ She stands. ‘C’mon, let’s head to the canteen, get some food or something.’

The canteen is a good idea. They can put the width of the table between them and eat in silence, and although Rimmer raises his eyebrows at Lister’s choice of chicken biriyani and strawberry milkshake, he manages not to comment.

In return she doesn’t do more than smirk about his mug of hot milk. _Bless_.

They’re just finishing up when Holly breaks in on them.

‘Oh hello.’ Rimmer says. ‘I thought you’d taken yourself offline.’

‘Leave it Rimmer. What’s the matter, Hol?’

‘The navicomps overheating. I need your help in the drive room.’

He might mean either or both of them, but it’s Lister who stands up.  Rimmer makes some sort of sound in his throat, as close to outraged protest as he can manage, but he doesn’t actually move.

‘You want to go instead?’ Lister asks, but Rimmer can’t seem to get his lips unstuck, and frankly she doesn’t think they have time to argue the toss.

‘Then I guess I am. Somebody has to.’

Rimmer doesn’t turn to watch her go. He feels quite literally paralysed with fear. Like something heavy is holding him in his seat, even restricting his breathing.

It’s not until she’s left that he can do anything at all, and even then it’s only pushing his warm milky drink out of the way so he can bury his head in his hands.

Humiliation comes as fresh and hot as it did to the quivering nine year old who hid under the stairs, the teenager who pretended his school didn’t have a sports day so that his parents wouldn’t turn up just to see him disgrace himself. Again.

All he can see is his father’s disappointment, his friends and brothers and uncles sneering.

He tries to tell them - tell himself - it’s not his fault. He’s not on top form. He’s had a number of shocks today, and Lister hasn’t actually seen herself as a dead person as far as he knows. But trumping that, every time, like an echo to every squiggly squirmy cowardly custard thought, is the simple fact she’s a _girl_. What kind of a man is he, anyway, letting a girl be braver than him?  What kind of a man lets a girl go off and be the hero while he sits here like a great gutless lemon?

 

Up in the drive room Deb is not feeling especially heroic, but she’s putting her best face on it. Holly’s even, slightly apologetic voice helps.

‘It can’t cope with the influx of data at lightspeed Deb. Can you hook it up to the drive computer?’

She recognises the drive computer from some of Rimmer’s paperwork. It doesn’t look like much. Just a squarish box with a few panels of wiring and some very basic software to filter out irrelevancies, feeding only what’s really needed back to the ship.

There are ten different inputs – hull temperature is one, taken from different points, and then fuel consumption and output and speed and - and she can’t remember any of the other six, but she doesn’t need to know them to connect a couple of ports up and flick ten switches.

_One_ and two and three and four, bracing queasily for an explosion each time. Five and six and seven and eight, and her gut is churning, nine and.. hesitating and closing her eyes.. ten.

Done. Piece of cake.


	6. Chapter 6

Over the next few weeks Rimmer’s brain performs a strange sort of advanced yoga, twisting into unnatural shapes, desperately trying to believe he didn’t see what he knows he did see in that mirror. It makes it harder to excuse or explain (anyway never explain, never apologise, as father used to say).

Which leaves him trying to pretend the whole night never happened. Cutting the whole thing dead.

Lister, who’s quite hyped about how she handled it, actually, thinks he’s cracking up. Hiding from explosions might make you a yellow bellied nit. Hiding from the fact you’re hiding from explosions is a whole new level of.. something.

Anyway he should be pleased. If there’s going to be an explosion then they can’t go into stasis. They'll need to be out and about to deal with it.

‘Unless.’ Rimmer says unhelpfully. ‘The explosion is caused by us not going into stasis. In which case we should go into stasis to prevent it. Except we can’t prevent it if it’s already happened.’

There’s some more stuff after that, about Oedipus and Alexander the Great, but Lister isn’t really listening. Wasn’t Oedipus the guy who married his mum? Because that doesn’t seem to be anything to do with anything, and Alexander the Great is just one of those empire building smeggers that Rimmer seems able to drag into any conversation.

Him and Napoleon, who Lister always pictures on his donkey, like in the Walker.

But it’s not just that, is it? Rimmer’s changing the subject on purpose. Again. And he’s.. Off, somehow. Weird, even for Rimmer. Wound extra tight. Dark circles under his eyes.

He insists there’s nothing wrong.

She’s still a bit stir crazy. Rimmer hangs out on the observation dome when the walls start closing in, but she wants a planet. Wants to be doing. Otherwise time just crawls past.

Even learning how to pilot Blue Midget is better than that. Even doing her hair properly – it needs moisture, and a bit of patience, and is still pretty anarchic when she’s done, but it’s a healthy anarchy. Not the tatty one she started out with.

She takes a leaf out of the Cat’s book too. Goes investigating. Poking around the diesel decks and the officer’s quarters and engineering, bringing back lipsticks and a guitar and an old spacebike she has to rope Rimmer in to lug back.

Rimmer, predictably, thinks she’s mad.

‘Are you really planning to ride this thing?’

‘Dunno. I thought I’d see if I can fix it first. There's the manual and everything.’ She takes a hardback book out of one of the panniers and hold it up so that Rimmer can see the line drawing on the front. ‘Can’t be that hard.’

‘But you don’t know the first thing about engineering.’

‘Rimmer, it’s just something to do. Found a jacket as well.’ She waves a screwdriver at the leather monstrosity she’d already left on the back of the chair.  


‘You could live it that. It must be knee length on you.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ She’s already sitting on the floor, concentrating on unscrewing something. It occurs to Rimmer that he could probably see down the front of her shirt if he tried.

She’d notice though. And she was hissy enough when she found his copy of ‘how to get girls by hypnosis’. He’s discreetly disposed of the love celibacy leaflets.

Besides, it’s not totally awful sitting on the edge of the bunk with a cup of tea while Lister works. Reading, he’s amused to note, tapping the tip of the screwdriver against the text in the harder paragraphs. Muttering random nonsense like ‘What the smeg is a ratchet?’ or ‘come ‘ere you’ when one of the ball bearings rolls away. It’s quite soothing.

When Lister finally glances up she finds Rimmer has swung his legs up on Marie’s bunk and is a fair way to dropping off. Good.

Time to go for another walkabout. She’s been wondering where the Cat’s got to lately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'The Walker' Lister is thinking of is the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, where she surely must have gone with the school at least.  
> That portrait here: http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/talkingheads/access/portrait-3.aspx


End file.
